Buba’s Book Reviews: Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

Title: Bitter Medicine

Author: Mia Tsai

Genre: Romance, Romantic Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy

Publisher: Tachyon

Publication Date: Coming out March 14, 2023

Rating: 10/10

Big thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon for providing me an ARC to review.

Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai is a gorgeously written debut romantic fantasy that takes place at a fairy temp agency. When it comes to Romance I am not normally a fan of office/workplace romance, but Bitter Medicine might just have changed my mind about the whole subgenre. I cannot say enough how much I adored the concept of the Bureau and all the fun and fascinating details of the fae world that Tsai developed around the most heart wrenching story of love, family duty, and self-acceptance I’ve read in a long time.

Ellie is a Chinese immortal, posing as a mediocre magical calligrapher. She’s been sacrificing any chance at joy and hiding her true magical potential in order to protect her eldest brother from their youngest brother who needs them both dead to fill the role of family heir that her eldest brother refused to take up.

Luc is a French half-elven fixer for the controlling head of the bureau whose terrifying reputation and lack of interpersonal skills have cut him off from his colleagues and left him desperately lonely. His only goals are to impress his boss enough to earn leave to pursue a curse breaking personal project whose victims have haunted him for years.

When Elle starts personalizing Luc’s glyph orders and saves his life, he comes requesting a magical commission that might challenge her for the first time in years, but at the same time could reveal her and her eldest brother to the brother hunting them.

The chemistry between these characters is electric from the first moment they’re on page together. I adored how absolutely in love Luc is from the very first page. The adoration between these characters who so clearly and deeply want to be seen and loved and yet whom familial duty and work hold back and force them apart has my whole entire heart.

Elle is such a self-effacing and yet unbelievably badass character. Luc is the unbelievable badass that you will love for how soft he can be for Elle (and also his cooking, nothing sexier than a man who can cook omg the way this book made my mouth water)

The way Tsai writes magic made my heart flutter from page 1. I could not get enough of Elle’s xianxia-inspired magic, and the oh so cool calligraphy/glyph magic. Every new and inventive use felt fresh and fascinating and yet so innately a part of who Elle is as a person.  I hope to read so much more fantasy from this author. I could lose myself in her magical world for hours and I absolutely did, binge reading this straight through in 6 hours.

On top of being eminently bingeable Tsai handles an interracial/multicultural romance with so much nuance and grace I was swooning. We love a man who doesn’t tolerate racist microaggressions. The multicultural aspects definitely hit me in all the Asian diaspora feels, of having family and a home impossibly far away that you can never return to because you have been irreparably changed by leaving. Of having expectations and duties heaped upon you and feeling that no matter how much you sacrifice it will never be enough in the eyes of your family and the harrowing journey to self-love and self-acceptance for who you are instead of what you can do for those you love. I actually wept my heart out at multiple points and then had it pieced together masterfully.

Bitter Medicine is hands down my favorite read of 2022 and I already can’t wait to read it again to linger with my new favorite couple.

Buba’s Books: Writing Update – Gator 911 check-in at (almost) 50k

Hi All!

It’s been a busy month for me tackling both Camp Nanowrimo and DVpit!

I figured not falling off the wagon on that was a touch more vital than blog updates, but still, I missed yelling about my writing updates! Now that I’m within spitting distance of my stretch writing goal for April.  (47K!!! which I hope to knock out my last 3k tonight and tomorrow.) I feel like I can get back to my regular blogging schedule.

So, let me start by saying this has been my first attempt at writing a 1^st draft that has been really intensely outlined. I spent the month of March creating character lists, character arcs, and then finally a chapter outline/roadmap to write from. It has really made writing on low inspiration days so much easier.

HOWEVER, now that I am writing the back 3^rd of the novel I realize I’ve left all but the faintest suggestion of the road behind. I think overall this will be a good thing for the novel, as I wrote the characters more and really fleshed out their relationships with each other I realized some of the interpersonal conflicts I’d put in the outline just didn’t make sense anymore. I think as soon as I hit my 50k I’m going to take a pause to re-align the tail end of my outline with where we are now before I really dive into writing the climax in May.

A short excerpt the current opening lines of Gator 911 sure to be polished about a million times but it’s a good start:

The buzz of her phone was easy to ignore, the high pitched pings of the texts coming in likewise. She threw the phone in the general direction of the window and heard a thunk rather than the desired crash. Half a bottle of tequila had vanished and so she was too far gone to help anyone. The burn of alcohol as it slid down was as comforting as the scream of the cicadas that seemed to waver through the humid air outside.  As much a firm reminder of where and when she was, as the lack of Afghanistan’s haunting Adhan, the call to prayer, and air so dry even her frizzy hair had behaved itself.

She was back home in good ol’ Salt’s Bayou, Texas and she was safe. She hated it.

Goals for this week:

Write the final 3k words I’ve been procrastinating.

Write a scene with Morgan, Grace’s ex-fiance Betrayer and Destroyer of Worlds, even if it doesn’t go in the draft and is going to get cut, because I desperately need to understand who this guy is beyond how angry Grace is about his existence.

In other news, given recent pay cuts and general job market uncertainty, I’m activating the Patreon account I’ve been sitting on for a few years. I suspect I’m about to have a lot more free time on my hands! So if you’d like to get sneak peeks of my attempting not to go mad as a forced stay at home wife and writer, or would like to support my continuing to write, do check it out!

https://www.patreon.com/bubasbooks

Buba’s Book Reviews: The Hob’s Bargain by Patricia Briggs

Title: The Hob’s Bargain

Author: Patricia Briggs

Genre: Fantasy Fiction

Publisher: Ace Books

Publication date: 2001

Rating: 6/10

Patricia Briggs is one of my favorite contemporary fantasy authors, so I thought I would dig into some of her early work. This standalone traditional fantasy was a really great read that brought a lot of great things into a genre that can get really tied up in its own tropes.

The Hobb’s Bargain is a twist on beauty and the beast, where beauty is a happily married 30 year-old with the second sight named Aren. She loses her family and her husband to raiders and then the village is plunged into peril when the blood magic that held the magic of the land is released and the very earth shifts. Aren’s occasional visions become true power. Another consequence is that wildlings, creatures of magic, are returning to the world. The combined threats of the raiders and the wildlings place the village in great peril and so she goes to the Hob and offers to make a bargain with him for his protection of the village.

I loved every single concept in this book.

I loved that it had a 30-year-old woman as the heroine discovering her powers and saving the day, I want more stories with women in their 30s. I loved that she was involved with and invested in her community. I loved that there was no weird much ado about sacrificing a virgin to the demons/dragon/Faries. I loved that she made the decision to make the bargain with the Hob.

I loved that there was disability representation in Kith, who was awesome and deserves everything. I loved that Aren and Kith had an honest to goodness friendship between a man and a woman and did not fall in love.

I loved that the traditional beauty and the beast twist did not have the traditional Stockholm Syndrome.

I loved that they made a deal with a magical creature and then were like wait, you have got to hold up your end for a year before we pay the price.

I loved that this was a book about courtship.

And I loved the Hob, he was fantastic, and a true “beast” as in this is no spoiled princeling turned monster, this is a wildling, it thinks like a wildling and it stays a wildling, and I loved his mischievous bent and his ability to love the heroine exactly as she was.

I loved the world and its fascinating details and myriad wildlings coming alive.

Yet somehow with all these lovely pieces together I was never in love with the story. I never disliked it. I made it all the way through quickly and easily, but I was never quite swept away by the story. I cannot quite answer why. I loved all the pieces separately, and having dissected the experience for a week I cannot pick out any one thing that I disliked. Except perhaps the assumed voice the narrator used for the MC Aren. I cannot suss out if my lack of enthusiasm for this book is due only to my mild irritation with the tone of the narrator or the story itself. If I ever have the chance to pick this up at my library I may give it another read and see if without the audio the book can successfully suck me in. If you love beauty and the beast re-tellings this book is certainly worth the read.

 

Buba’s Book Reviews: On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufahl

Title: On Swift Horses

Author: Shannon Pufahl

Genre: Fiction/Historical Fiction/LGBT lit

Publisher: Riverhead

Publication date: 11/05/19

Rating: 7/10

On Swift Horses is a haunting and beautiful historical fiction set in the late 1950s. It follows the story of Muriel, a newly married waitress from Kansas who with her new husband, Lee, has set out to San Diego to make a new life. Intertwined with it and in parallel to it, is the story of Julius, Lee’s brother, a drifter, gambler, petty thief, and a gay man. Although she doesn’t originally know what it is about Julius that draws her in, Muriel recognizes the otherness of him that is growing slowly within herself and is fascinated.

The story is a coming into self-possession for Muriel, as she uses the gossip of her jockey patrons at her work to bet on racehorses eventually winning enough for build a home in California and start a future together with Lee, at least until she discovers that perhaps perfect domesticity is not at all what she wants.  Muriel is a woman who lost her mother young and cut adrift, follows the script that was left for her. She finds a serious young man back from the war and sets about building a world of obligations to tie herself down and build walls so that her life will make sense again. It doesn’t begin to become about joy until she discovers that the otherness she admires in Julius is in her too.

Meanwhile, Julius is a man only at home on the edges. The war and the difficulties he faced in the navy due to his closeted lifestyle have made him cynical and unwilling to settle. He spends much of the book fruitlessly chasing after his gay lover in a search that is both haunting and endlessly hopeful.

The book is a beautiful read, lyrical and evocative even as it takes the post-war idealism and scratches away the gilt, looking straight into the eyes of atomic tests, the rapidly chilling cold war, gay men struggling to not be constantly at the fringes, and women striving to be seen.

I admit that I spent much of the book in pleasant confusion, drifting along on the lyricism and sweet melancholy. I also despite my best efforts began to dislike Julius, I kept wanting him to take charge of his life, instead of repeating the same mistakes, but that didn’t happen, and honestly, I don’t think it should have, that’s not what his story was about. On the other hand, I was deeply engrossed in and enchanted with Muriel’s journey of self-discovery, her bald fearlessness, and her determination.

If you like historical fiction from this era I cannot recommend it enough, it’s really a peek behind the curtain of all the huge momentous happenings of the era into the smaller happenings of little lives that are just as momentous. I’ll also say I went into the book knowing I’d rather burn money than gamble with it, so while the window into the world of gambling and betting was fascinating it really only cemented my desire to never ever gamble.

Buba’s Book Reviews: Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Title: Salt Slow

Author:Julia Armfield

Genre: Sci-Fi, Lesbian Literature

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Publication date: May 28, 2019

Rating: 8/10

I want to preface this review with the statement that I don’t normally enjoy horror. I hate how women become objects for punishment and titillating unnecessarily graphic violence. I often find the character’s decisions stupid and lacking a blind chicken’s sense of self-preservation.

Salt Slow, a collection of eerie, horror-tilted, speculative fiction short stories by Julia Armfield has none of the shortfalls that often make me put aside stories of this theme.

The titles include

Mantis

The Great Awake

The Collectables

Formerly Feral

Stop your women’s ears with wax

Granite

Smack

Cassandra After salt slow

All of these stories explore with lyrical sensitivity and raw feeling a different facet of uniquely feminine horror. Despite this, there is an undeniable sense of empowerment. There is also a delightfully bald-faced assumption that women prefer the company of other women as friends and as lovers. In a wash of books and horror where heteronormativity is not just the norm its a staple, this was a refreshing delight.

In these stories, women are not the beautiful punching bags of loved ones or masked men or horrors unspeakable. In these stories, girls metamorphosize from struggling disjointed girlhood into beautiful monsters themselves and devour the boys pressuring them for sex. Women are allowed to embrace the grotesque and heedlessly follow an all-woman band of beings, guised as humans, whose siren songs urge their all-girl roadies to turn Maenad, like the wine and blood mad followers of Dionysus. They wreak unspeakable horrors on the men around them in paroxysms of joy. There was something almost Morrigan and threefold goddess about the band that fascinated me. I think it was the crow feathers and the whispers of murder and atrocity that follows in their wake like bloody streamers.

This is a collection of stories for every woman who’s struggled with the grotesque realities of life. They are as much about metaphor as the speculative monster being unveiled one layer at a time. The entire collection is threaded together with little callbacks to other stories, like echoes. There is a fascination with curiously clinical collective nouns, such as smack of jellyfish and an intentional lyricism and beauty of language that makes the spare descriptions of dismemberment and ruin seem all the more shocking.

I cannot recommend this read enough, I hope it leaves you feeling strange and wistful and a little bit more monstrous.

Status Update on One Half A Dead Witch WIP – 1.18.20

5 things my WIP contains:

A half dead witch

A copper dragon having an identity crisis

A Jewish warlock

Happy lesbians

Magical homebrewing

After some soul searching and talking to several friends who love witch books, I’ve decided NOT to rename One Half A Dead Witch to Burned Bridges. The votes are in and despite my handling witches in a new and different way, they’re still witches. Plus I adore witches, and I’ve been viewing this as my homage to modern witchcraft for too long to give it up.

*Cue occult background sounds*

https://pixabay.com/photos/candle-candlelight-ceremony-occult-1868640/

I’ve been working on draft 2 regardless of this decision to not change the working title. It looks like my draft 0 has enough material to become 3 books, so that was an interesting discovery. I’m currently about 2 chapters from the end of Draft 2 Book 1, and I’m actually very happy with the midpoint climax that I’ve turned into a final Climax. The two month time skip I inserted about halfway through draft 1 is the perfect place to split off Book 1.

I spent the last 2 months really beefing up the collusion of the minor antagonist with the main antagonist. I think it will give book one a more satisfying arc, plus every good antagonist need minions and spies.

Another focus has been on authentic character building.  I’ve been digging in and doing a lot of research so that I can properly portray the book’s secondary lead Dinah, who is a Jewish Warlock, and a happily married lesbian mom. It’s very important to me that I do justice to writing her and her family. If there are any Jewish writers out there I would love to chat with you to get your feedback on her.

On that note here are the last lines I typed:

Sara-Madigan thought this was a bad idea. Mara could tell because she had her arms wrapped around herself, left hand jammed in the back right pocket of her dress pants, right hand in the front left, hands fisted. Mara wanted to ask how she’d found women’s dress pants with front and back pockets.